N-M Chapter 178: One Hundred and Twenty Arisen!
Chapter 178: One Hundred and Twenty Arisen!
One hundred and twenty glowing eyes stared back at him. It felt cool, like bulbs shining in their own magical way, each pair of green lights burning steadily in the fading afternoon light. For a moment, Darion let himself imagine there were thousands of them. An army sprawling across the field in front of him, formation initialized, weapons ready, waiting for his command to attack.
He smiled at the thought.
Well... soon. Soon he would be able to do that. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. If he kept building his forces, kept adding to his inventory, kept raising every usable corpse he could find, the numbers would grow. One hundred and forty today. Two hundred tomorrow. Three hundred next month. The inventory cap was 150 knights for now, but that cap would expand. It always did when he ranked up. And when it did, he would be ready.
But for now, he had work to do. He needed to check what he had actually raised.
Darion focused on the nearest undead and pulled up its stats.
[Undead Knight – Rust Tier]
Former Rank: Percvale Infantry
Combat Instinct: Preserved (Fragmented)
Strength: 49
Endurance: 71
Loyalty: 70
Pain Response: None
Morale: Irrelevant
Special Trait: Tireless (Does not fatigue)
Weakness: Core Destruction (Skull / Spine)
He moved to the next.
[Undead Knight – Rust Tier]
Former Rank: Percvale Infantry
Combat Instinct: Preserved (Fragmented)
Strength: 51
Endurance: 61
Loyalty: 69
Pain Response: None
Morale: Irrelevant
Special Trait: Tireless (Does not fatigue)
Weakness: Core Destruction (Skull / Spine)
---
[Undead Knight – Bone Tier]
Former Rank: Percvale Infantry
Combat Instinct: Preserved (Fragmented)
Strength: 44
Endurance: 80
Loyalty: 69
Pain Response: None
Morale: Irrelevant
Special Trait: Tireless (Does not fatigue)
Weakness: Core Destruction (Skull / Spine)
---
[Undead Knight – Bone Tier]
Former Rank: Percvale Infantry
Combat Instinct: Preserved (Fragmented)
Strength: 31
Endurance: 89
Loyalty: 65
Pain Response: None
Morale: Irrelevant
Special Trait: Tireless (Does not fatigue)
Weakness: Core Destruction (Skull / Spine)
---
[Undead Knight – Rust Tier]
Former Rank: Percvale Infantry
Combat Instinct: Preserved (Fragmented)
Strength: 38
Endurance: 40
Loyalty: 71
Pain Response: None
Morale: Irrelevant
Special Trait: Tireless (Does not fatigue)
Weakness: Core Destruction (Skull / Spine)
---
And so many more. He couldn’t check every single one, that would take hours, but he scanned enough to get a sense of what he had.
Pretty decent, he decided. Most were good, high endurance, respectable strength, loyalty in the seventies. Others were meh: lower stats, weaker frames, the kind of undead that would hold the line but not much else. But they would do. They would fill the ranks, absorb hits, and give his living knights room to maneuver.
He had avoided Rotten and Decaying corpses this time, so he only got a few from those tiers. Most of what he raised was Rust or Bone. Not the best, but solid and reliable. The kind of undead that wouldn’t crumble the moment an enemy looked at them wrong.
Darion unsummoned the undeads to his inventory.
One by one, he pulled the undead in. Green light flickered across the graveyard as each corpse dissolved and vanished, leaving nothing behind but disturbed earth and the memory of glowing eyes.
Whoosh.
They were gone.
He checked his inventory screen.
Knight Undead Inventory: 140/150
One hundred and forty undead knights. That was a damn lot. More than he had ever raised at once. More than he had ever needed before. He felt more powerful just looking at the number, a quiet confidence settling into his chest. If another Valdenmoor came knocking, they would find a much different Percvale waiting for them.
And he was relieved. He had been prolonging this in a way, kind of avoiding the work that would be involved. Digging. Sorting. Raising. Saying "Arise" a hundred and twenty times. It had seemed like a drag, and honestly, it had been a drag. But now that it was done, he realized it was easier than he had been imagining. The undead did most of the heavy lifting. He just supervised and spoke the words.
His system screen appeared before him.
[STATUS]
Name: Darion
Title: Baron of Percvale
Class: Necromancer
Rank: Acolyte
Territory: Percvale (Border Domain)
Territorial Resonance: Low (Starving-aligned — Improving)
[ATTRIBUTES]
Strength: 69 [+3]
Agility: 58 [+2]
Endurance: 68 [+2]
Vitality: 61 [+2]
Perception: 64
Intelligence: 94 [+3]
Willpower: 73 [+2]
[Knight Undead Inventory: 140/150]
[Animal Undead Inventory: 10/70]
[Skills: Death Perception, Distant Command]
Darion studied it.
The usual. His attributes had crept up slightly, a point here, a point there. Intelligence was still his highest at 94, which made sense. He had been doing a lot of thinking lately. Planning. Negotiating. Strategizing. The rest were slowly climbing as his body adapted to this world’s demands.
Nothing surprising. Nothing disappointing. Just steady, gradual progress.
Now it was time to fill the remaining ten spots. The special ones. He needed to find graves of strong commanders, knights who had led others in life, who had been large and powerful, whose battle instincts would make them worth more than a hundred rust-tier infantry.
The commander’s grave was still waiting. The one the system had rejected him from before. He would try that one first.
Darion turned away from his inventory and looked across the graveyard. The sun was lower now. Shadows stretched longer between the tombstones.
It was definitely late afternoon or early evening.
He still had time, he hoped.
Darion walked through the graveyard, stepping carefully between the disturbed graves and scattered piles of earth. His eyes scanned the tombstones, searching for the one he remembered.
The name had stuck with him, not because it was particularly memorable, but because the system’s rejection had been so absolute. Too powerful for your current rank. Those words had burned themselves into his memory.
He found it near the center of the graveyard, just where he remembered. The stone was larger than the others, darker too, with letters that had been carved deep enough to survive the years. A commander’s grave. Someone who had led knights in life, who had been large and strong, whose bones still held power even in death.
Darion smiled slightly.
He reached into his inventory and summoned three undead knights. They materialized before him, green light flickering briefly before fading. He pointed at the grave.
"Find shovels. Dig."
The undead turned and located the scattered tools lying nearby. Within moments, they were at the grave, shovels biting into the earth. Three of them working on one grave made the task super quick. Very, very quick. Dirt flew through the air, piling up on both sides as they dug deeper and deeper. The hole grew. The shovels struck something solid, wood, and the undead worked faster, clearing away the soil around the old coffin.
Then they lifted it out.
The coffin was old, the wood dark and weathered, but it held together as they set it down on the grass beside the grave. One of the undead pried open the lid, and Darion stepped forward to look inside.
The corpse was strong. Still intact. Not fresh, but not crumbling either. The bones were large, the frame broad, the kind of body that had been built for battle. Whoever this man had been, he had not been small.
Darion inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly.
Would he be rejected again? He didn’t know, to be honest. The last time he had tried this, the system had shut him down immediately. Too powerful for your current rank. But that was then. He was at Acolyte rank now in the Necromancer levels of this system. He had grown. He had raised over a hundred knights today alone. Surely that meant something. Surely the system would recognize his progress.
He hoped for the best. That was all he could do.
The undeads he summoned just stood there, motionless like statues, holding their shovels, looking at nothing in particular, just awaiting another command.
They didn’t shift their weight, didn’t scratch their noses and didn’t blink. They simply existed, frozen in place, their hollow eyes staring into the middle distance, not even paying attention to what Darion was doing.
Things that acted like humans but had not a single life in them.
Breathing deeply, Darion placed his hand on the corpse’s chest. The bones were cold beneath his palm, dry and solid. He focused his energy, felt the familiar pull in his chest, and spoke the word.
"Arise."
And immediately —
Boom.
Green light erupted from the chest, spreading outward like cracks in ice. It ran along the bones, through the ribs, up the spine, into the skull. The light spread and spread, slowly engulfing the entire corpse until it glowed with a brilliant emerald radiance.
Then the undead’s eyes shone, bright green, burning, and it stood up.
It rose from the coffin smoothly, without hesitation, its hollow gaze fixed on Darion. For a moment it simply stood there, as if assessing its new existence.
Then it bowed. A deep, respectful bow, the kind a soldier would give to a commander.
Darion smiled.
[Congratulations! You have revived a Commander’s corpse!]